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From: jbn@glacier.STANFORD.EDU (John B. Nagle)
Newsgroups: sci.crypt,comp.misc
Subject: Re: public key encryption and RSA patent status
Message-ID: <17186@glacier.STANFORD.EDU>
Date: Tue, 29-Sep-87 00:30:06 EDT
Article-I.D.: glacier.17186
Posted: Tue Sep 29 00:30:06 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 1-Oct-87 05:33:56 EDT
References: <106@lll-risky.arpa> <622@rocky.STANFORD.EDU>
Reply-To: jbn@glacier.UUCP (John B. Nagle)
Organization: Stanford University
Lines: 13
Keywords: RSA patent
Xref: mnetor sci.crypt:595 comp.misc:1363


     The RSA patent covers only the product-of-two-large-primes public
key cryptosystem.  One can still use a knapsack-based public key system.
Solutions are known for the knapsack problem, of course.  But ways are
known to factor large numbers, too, and recent progress in this area has been
rapid.  Recent contributors to this group have reported on their work in
factoring, and are factoring numbers of sizes that used to be considered
reasonable for RSA algorithms.  So RSA really is obsolete technology.

     I don't believe that at present there are any really satisfactory
functions known for public-key systems.  

					John Nagle